


what am i to you?

by aenar_thedragonlady



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:40:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29644521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aenar_thedragonlady/pseuds/aenar_thedragonlady
Summary: after all that's happened,after all that they'd been through,this was what it came to,so she asks,"what am i to you?"
Relationships: Mikasa Ackerman/Eren Yeager
Comments: 14
Kudos: 117





	what am i to you?

Her head pounded against her skull.

Damn it, if she was dead her head shouldn’t hurt this much.

Then the pain spread to her neck, and back, and arms and legs.

“Shit.” she groaned, hearing her own voice echo back at her. She was on a hard mattress, the air in the room heavy and damp. It smelled of cobwebs and dust. Her eyes opened to see that the only light source was from a torch hanging somewhere in the space.

Her palms pressed into the sides of her head as she sat up.

“Where...?” her voice faltered, seeing the bars of the cell she was in. How the hell did she end up here? In a cell?

The last thing she remembered before she became unconscious was…

The Rumbling.

She shot to her feet and rammed herself into the bars. She shook and rattled the rusty metal, shouting her lungs out. She demanded the attention of anyone that was in the vicinity of the space she was in. 

A cold wind blew through the small opening behind her, rustling the flame of the torch that lit her room. She called and called, the strain in her throat magnifying until all that was heard from her voice was a rasp. 

Her efforts were futile. Seemed like nobody was there. At least, no one that cared.

She dropped to her knees, her shaking hands still on the bars. They were cold against her forehead. She was surprised she wasn’t injured in any way, considering how she ended up in this cursed cell.

The sudden and rough movements were a big mistake on her part, the soreness and ache settled in not too long after. She sighed.

The Rumbling continued after Zeke was decapitated, and they all swarmed the head of the Founding titan as a last resort. They lost Armin after he blasted the head in their first attempt, and they lost Reiner to the blast. The previous titan shifters, who upon Armin and Zeke’s insistence helped them initially, turned on them, and the last thing she remembered was looking the Founding titan in its eyes, before hearing people shout her name.

Then what might have been two parts of a sphere closed around her, freezing solid before she could even notice that it was happening.

He used the Warhammer.

Her ODM gear lines were severed and she fell to the base of the cage, thrown around as the titan that captured her moved around. Panic gripped her so badly that her mind was blank. Every blade she struck against the Warhammer's armour snapped, she used up all of her thunderspears, and before she could think of anything else, the sphere lost altitude so suddenly that she was thrown upwards, blacking out when her head hit the side of the cage hard.

Her head throbbed as she remembered what happened.

All the other cells were empty.

Armin… The others…

A door opened somewhere on the other side of the dungeon, the sound of heavy footsteps bouncing off the walls. From the shadow that was cast on the floor, she didn’t have to look up to know who it was. She knew his stature too well that she instantly knew. She kept her position from earlier.

He placed a chair and sat down, right in front of where she kneeled against the bars.

The silence that came from both of them grew deafening.

She didn’t know what she wanted to do.

She wanted to weep and wail from how defeated she felt. She wanted to rejoice, relieved at how she wasn’t the only one alive and that he was safe. She wanted to keep this silence between them, not giving him the simple mercy of company that he hoped from her. She wanted to slam him against the wall and scream at him out of raging anger. She wanted to grab onto that shard of cement that she saw at the corner of her cell and stab him right in the heart with it, just to let him know how much pain and anguish she had been in because of him and his actions.

In her head, she was doing all those things, but she was tired, so very tired.

He seemed to be contemplating on what to say and do as well, his breathing calm, controlled. It was very unlike him. He definitely wanted to know her stance on whatever they knew had to be talked about, and he was willing to wait. Expected, but odd of him anyways.

Why wouldn’t he wait? She almost laughed. He’d done what he wanted to do. He saved Paradis, as he saw it. He successfully levelled the rest of the world and everyone who stood in his way. He had all the time in the world to wait for her to say something.

“You should have just killed me during the fight,” she breathed at last, her sharp and bitter tone diluted by her fatigue. Her voice was barely a whisper, but she hoped so dearly that it did what she wanted it to do to him.

His breath hitched, which meant she struck something in him. She hoped so badly that it hurt him.

Silence followed her words, heavy and haunting in the small space they had between them.

“Why would I give up on the only person who hasn’t given up on me?”

Her breathing stopped. Her throat closed up. Her eyes watered. She gripped the bars so hard her knuckles felt like they were about to snap apart.

It happened so swiftly she was surprised with what was left of her abilities. His torso and face slammed against the bars, her hands on the collar of his shirt. His chair fell backwards as he kneeled on the other side of the cell. They were eye to eye. Though his face was emotionless, she saw how hurricanes brewed behind his eyes. 

It almost made her feel sorry for him.

“Bullshit, Eren.” she spat, angered tears furiously flowing from her eyes as she grimaced at him. Her breathing grew ragged. Her chest grew tight. She was seething.

“We all wanted you to come back and-and tried to stop whatever madness you did but you… You-ugh!” she shouted, shoving him backwards as she stood, pacing frantically around the cell.

What she said was the truth. Even in the middle of all the chaos and mayhem he got them in, even after all those deaths, she still very much hoped for him to come to his senses and stop the bloodshed. Somewhere in her, as she looked the Founding Titan in its hollow, menacing eyes, she hoped that he saw how she wasn’t ready to give up on him, not just yet. 

But she knew it was too late for hope.

He stood from the floor slowly, his eyes trailing each of her movements. She felt like a wild animal. She wanted to murder and maim him, she wanted to make him regret all the choices he made. She wanted to make him wish he was dead. She wanted to go feral and let him know just how much she had been hurting from the consequences of his actions.

All their faces flashed behind her eyes.

Sasha.

Hange.

Levi.

Reiner.

Armin.

Pieck.

Gabi.

Falco.

Connie.

Jean.

All the innocent people trampled helplessly under the Rumbling.

All those lives, wasted.

She yelled, her anger manifesting physically.

“You should’ve left me to die. You should’ve killed me. What dumb maniac saves the person they’ve always hated since they’re a kid?” she cried out, laughing, venom dripping from her voice as she approached him, the only thing between them being the bars that confined her from having her way with him.

He responded with silence.

But she saw something she recognized flash in his eyes. It was pain. His lips turned downwards to put a frown on his face. He seemed almost disappointed with what she said.

“You of all people should know that that’s a lie,” he sighed, defeat clear in his tone.

She let another bitter laugh come between them. She very much wished he was joking.

“If it wasn’t a lie, then you would’ve listened to me and let me help you. You would’ve let us think of other things that could be done. You would’ve-” her words fumbled, her mind reeling.

“And let this place, this small place we call home be an easy target to enemies far more advanced in weaponry and more ruthless than we’ll ever be?” He tried reasoning with her. She wasn’t accepting any of his justifications anymore.

She looked at him like he just said the stupidest thing in the world. She scoffed. She fumed, meeting his eyes, “Says the man who trampled the entire world.” 

“DAMN IT! I DID IT FOR US!” he roared, banging his arms against the bars, his eyes blazing with fury. His teeth were bared, his face, unlike the Eren she knew.

She gasped, flinching visibly, away from the bars. Away from him.

Eren was a stranger to her at that moment. Whoever this was, whatever he was now, she had to accept the fact that the Eren she knew so dearly was gone. No. He had long been gone, she was always too afraid to admit it. Now here he was proving her that. 

She took a few steps back to hide her tears in the darkness of the cell. And in that moment all her raging anger subsided to pain. It wasn’t even sadness. Sadness wrenched and festered in the heart and chest. Whatever she was feeling at the moment, stemmed from disappointment. Disappointment and betrayal.

“I guess it’s my turn to ask you this then,” she sobbed, dreading the words that would follow. And ultimately dreading his response. Her heart broke at the sight of him, as it always did after meeting him in Liberio. As it always did since the day he saw the future and lost all the light in his eyes.

“Eren.” she called, demanding his attention on her. 

He looked up at the mention of his name, his maniacal expression reverting to the blank emptiness he had earlier. The same expression that worried her all those years ago. She guessed at that point she had to get used to it.

“What am I... To you?”

Silence settled in the dungeon, becoming a barrier between them again.

It lingered in the space that they shared for so long that she flinched when he unlocked the cell door. She kept her eyes on the floor, feeling his eyes on her as he took steps to approach her. Her hands trembled so badly on her sides. She could almost imagine how hard she’d press her fingers against his windpipe as she strangled him, and the things he’d say to motivate her while she was doing so.

“Mikasa.”

She refused to meet his eyes. It had been too long since she met him in person. The last time they met and talked was when he told her he hated her. That memory made her heart twist in agony although he told her it was a lie.

He stopped when the tips of his shoes were a breath away from hers. Before, she’d shy away from being this close for different reasons. Now, she felt like turning away then running. She wanted to run away and never see him again. Another teardrop fell from her chin to the floor.

“Mikasa, look at me, please.”

She tried shoving at his chest, hoping to catch him off guard then make a run for it.

But she wasn’t the same as before. Her strength was used up to keep her in the state of barely living she was currently in. 

His hands easily caught hers and held them in front of her. Compared to hers, they were warm and clean, despite all the blood he shed only days before. He was firm with his grip, but it didn’t hurt as she expected it to.

She refused to avert her eyes from the floor, instead, she stooped her head lower. Her pulse grew erratic and she felt as if she was panicking. Why wouldn’t anyone, honestly? Try being in close proximity to the person who killed millions, if not billions of people and life.

Her arms shook in his hands as more tears fell.

“Mikasa, please,”

His voice, always loud, always proud and thunderous, was reduced to a whisper.

Giving in wasn’t a choice.

But what choice does she have? She could break out of wherever she was at and find nothing for her. Everyone she knew was gone. Dead and gone. She knew nobody now. No families. No friends. Nobody. No one, other than him. But giving in to whatever he asked of her was treason. She was a traitor to herself if she let him know that she too, in the anger and defiance that she so greatly expressed, was hoping that he’d come back to her, that he’d be the Eren she knew and cared for all those years ago. That he’d bring her back home. 

She hated herself at that moment. She hated how she knew he committed genocide and killed everyone she held dear and loved yet still couldn’t bring herself to hate him. She hated how she knew if he cared for everyone else just as much as he did her, he would have done the same for them as he did for her. 

She hated that she couldn’t bring herself to hate him.

You weak little girl. I feel sorry for you, Mikasa. You should be making him wish he was dead but here you are, still hoping he’s the person he was. Still hoping like the stupid, naive girl you always were.

“Mika-”

She looked up to meet his eyes. And it pained her to see them full of longing. For a moment, maybe for a fleeting moment, they were 16 again, in the streets of Liberio giving ice cream a first try. They were still somewhat hopeful. He was still alright and not hellbent on destroying the world. It was a far cry, but she saw that Eren again, the same Eren that insisted none of his friends inherit the Titan powers he was cursed with, the same Eren that took care of her and gave her a home and wrapped that damned scarf around her. The same Eren that promised her and everyone they’d have a future that didn’t require them to fight. The same Eren that guaranteed them peace. Her Eren. 

Her tears ran warm, carving rivers down her face. 

They studied each other, her in her grief-stricken state, and him in his conflicted silence.

When he spoke, she somehow saw the tree they’d always sit under, and those purple flowers she loved so much.

“You’re everything to me.”

The initial warmth that she felt from those four words and the caressing softness in his voice was delightful. They were heavenly. She reminded herself that it was treason, yet she still hoped to hear words that implied his feelings for her. A decade and global genocide was what it took for her to finally hear him say such things. 

Her eyes fluttered to a close in fear that he saw her joy. It took everything in her not to smile. Then she felt herself weep.

In a way, those four words, too, felt like poison. It blinded her, mind, heart and soul from the reality and horror that she knew they were in. It choked her and suffocated her. It constricted her into a cage. A cage full of this-this heaviness in her heart. It was a searing pain in her chest. It was a throbbing ache from deep within her. 

So this is love.

Again, for what could be the hundredth time, she wished so dearly that she was dead.

**Author's Note:**

> 2 more chapters and honestly i'm just ready to get my heart broken and my hopes for love and the future shattered to pieces
> 
> heck it's already broken and shattered to pieces
> 
> bring it on world *shakes fists at sky*
> 
> when in reality,,
> 
> *hugs blanket and cries*
> 
> but hey i trust isayama and his respect for his narrative, arcs, characters and themes and honestly whatever and however the ending might be, it's gonna be great :")
> 
> 138 is almost out so consider this canon divergent and me writing to get all my angst out hehe !! still, i'm glad y'all enjoyed this one !! thank you !! AND EREMIKA MY BABIES YES YES YES

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [i don’t think i could stand to be where you don’t see me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29716416) by [beetobie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetobie/pseuds/beetobie)




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